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Review of ‘Dehumanize yr Self’ album by Amberglow on Triplicate Records — May 31, 2018

Review of ‘Dehumanize yr Self’ album by Amberglow on Triplicate Records

Amberglow is a collaboration between Suncastle Music and SupplyFi and what I love is how the seamless fusing of ambience with edgy, IDM drum / percussion sounds, intricate arps and often edgy synth riffs creates a captivating sound.

It’s really hard to describe in terms of genres but that creates an album that has lots of different elements that merge and weave to create ambiences with edgy percussion, IDM / industrial sounds, evolving basses and great synth leads.

There are superb changes of feel, often subtle and sometimes more pronounced, a build / release of tension and great momentum.

Interrobang

(video by BVSMV Music)

Synth riff and growly bass to open, there’s an industrial feel to the percussion that gives a harsh, edgy feel contrasting with the more laid back synth riffs and ambient pads. Some great background sound effects and nice flow.

Dehumanize yr Self
A brooding opening, a dark ambience contrasting with arp and evolving pad sound. Percussion adds a great momentum and is an excellent contrasting element.

Replicant Village
Excellent background sound effects and momentum from the bass, an edgy, glitchy sound.

Negative Zero
subdued keys, distortion/feedback and kick with sparse percussive elements build tension nicely to an arp that’s a kind of release. Percussion adds a great momentum, great evolution of the song.

Brainscrap
Intricate sounding arp to open, drum pattern adds an edgy contrast. Bass gives momentum, excellent change of feel to acid-type bassline which gives a great contrast with the more ambient elements.

The Hum
Delayed synth riff and processed drums to open, drumming pattern has an edgy uptempo feel contrasting with the synth. The drop with the bass takes on a menacing feel, broody drumming, bass drone and sound fx create a superb atmosphere.

City Slicker in his Sports Car
Processed, drum / percussion sounds and bass riff create an edgy, tense sound. There’s a drone with subtle movement and contrasting arp, great contrast been the edgy feel and ambient elements.

Paper Labyrinth
Swirling synth and processed percussion to open, it’s a woozy type of sound propelled by a processed kick drum. Excellent synth riffs and background sounds. The song is excellently arranged, there’s an ambience but also an edge, it’s disconcerting at times.

Foro-Ford
A great soundscape, background bird type sounds are accompanied by sparse percussion and a drone.

Tzolk’in
Percussive rhythm to open accompanied by an also rhythmic organ-type riff leading into a synth lead with percussive background sounds that releases to an ambience.

Bombsheltered
Distorted chime-type riff to open and sparse percussion, there’s a stripped back feel given momentum by kick drum and percussion. The pad sounds add an excellent ambience. A slow building momentum to a final release.

Loopmasters update Loopcloud – the cloud connected app for streaming / importing samples into your DAW – to version 3 — May 24, 2018

Loopmasters update Loopcloud – the cloud connected app for streaming / importing samples into your DAW – to version 3

Version 3 update
Loopmasters have updated Loopcloud to version 3. This brings the option to import your own or 3rd party samples into Loopcloud. This is a feature that has been requested by many users, it’s a superb addition and makes Loopcloud even better, especially if you have a number of sample packs that aren’t from Loopmasters.

Loopcloud will tag your samples with key, BPM, instrument and type so that you can search, time-stretch or pitch-shift and experiment with patterns to audition one-shot samples. You can get more information from the overview video:

Although DAWs will typically time-stretch samples natively, pitch shifting is usually a bit more involved and the advantage of Loopcloud is that it handles these tasks seamlessly within your workflow making the process so much easier and more streamlined within Loopcloud.

I use Loopcloud a lot, it’s a brilliant way to experiment with new styles and sounds and I can easily find inspiration by auditioning a few samples and creating a song from these. Sometimes sounds you think will go together don’t always work but Loopcloud makes it easy to audition samples to see how they sound together and sometimes doing something unexpected or using a sound from a totally different genre can work really well. Similarly using processing or effects in unusual ways can yield similarly interesting results. The album embedded above was created entirely using Loopcloud and adding effects to process the samples. It covers a range of electronic styles from deep house to techno to drum and bass. The two singles below were also created in the same way.

The core functionality and interface remains the same as version 2, the full review is below:

Loopcloud 2.0 review

Introduction
Loopcloud, the cloud-connected application for browsing, streaming and importing your samples, loops and sounds effortlessly into your DAW just got better.

It lets you audition the award-winning Loopmasters catalogue in your DAW, in perfect sync with your projects, for free! Now you can preview millions of sounds made by the world’s top artists – whether you own them or not – straight from the cloud. Only pay for what you need when you’re ready to commit and drag directly into your project. The world of music is changing, and so is Loopmasters. Loopcloud 2.0 makes it possible to buy just the individual samples you’ve auditioned, as well as full packs or folders of sounds. You can now preview sounds right inside the app – no need to open a browser or download and unzip.

Pricing and Availability
Loopcloud 2.0 is free software that can be downloaded here and does not require a subscription – individual sounds, folders and packs are purchased with credits. All users will be given 500 free credits to get started. Until August 1st, all users will receive double credits on their first purchase. Packs previously purchased on the Loopmasters website will also appear in your account on Loopcloud 2.0. Credits don’t expire and you are free to purchase individual samples or entire sample packs.

Promo video:

“10 reasons why Loopcloud 2.0 is a game changer” video:

Using Loopcloud 2.0
Download is quick and simple and you can set an option to automatically check for updates. I have about 8 sample packs on my account, on first launching the app it took about an hour and a half to initialise content. The app starts pretty quickly when you subsequently open it. You also need to open the VST in your DAW and Loopcloud will then connect so you can drag and drop samples, match DAW tempo etc.

Library View x2

The GUI is well laid out and easy to navigate. At the top right, you have the option to switch between library and store view as well as options for displaying history, adding credits and setting preferences.

The search section occupies the top quarter of the display, the library or store occupies the middle part of display and the sample player occupies the lower part of the display. A very handy history function can be displayed on the lower right hand side of the display.

There are millions of sounds in the store and the app has intelligent search features such as by instrument, genre, label, key & bpm. It allows you to audition the sound in your project – including processing with effects – before you commit to a purchase. If you enable the auto-key feature then the samples are automatically converted to your chosen key. It also connects seamlessly with your DAW so that when you preview loops they will sync to your existing sounds in your project. There are also play / pause controls and manual controls to change pitch, half or double the bpm and a handy patterns option that can be used for one shots such as hi-hat or snare to easily create a groove. When you click ‘download HQ sample’ this changes to original and processed where the original sample retains the key and bpm whereas the processed sample is bpm sync’d and pitch shifted. You simply drag these into your DAW.

sample_player_options

If you don’t want to time stretch or pitch correct samples then you can alternatively search by specific key / bpm which works really well, much better than in your DAW search, especially for keys that are common letters like A or E.

Store Search x2

You can search by library or store which gives you access to the entire Loopmasters catalogue containing millions of sounds. When you purchase a sample, you get the high quality version in original and processed formats. Purchased samples can be stored in the cloud or downloaded, one of the huge benefits is that Loopcloud 2.0 is cloud connected, saving valuable hard drive space.

Store Front x2.jpg

There are a number of free samples plus 150 free samples added every week into the ‘new inspiration from Loopmasters’ folder so you don’t necessarily need to make a lot of purchases. In fact you get about 1Gb samples when you sign up so you can give it a good test without making a purchase. Although I have 8 sample packs on my account, my library is significantly larger – that explains the long initial setup. A screenshot is shown below – I’d need about 3 of these to fit the whole library in. I’m not saying these are full sample packs but there’s a wealth of free content.

library_screenshot

How does it compare to other services?
The main alternatives are Splice and Noiiz which are both subscription services. All 3 offer features that will suit different users. The best value appears to be Noiiz which has exclusive Samplephonics content but the library is about 10x smaller at about 450 or so sample packs and requires an upfront payment of $99, about £73. This same spend would give about 15000 credits on Loopcloud under the current deal, equivalent to about 5 full packs, 150 – 600 samples depending on cost. The annual Splice membership would cost about the same, £70.80 per year, but there are limits on monthly downloads and the app isn’t as fully featured.

Loopcloud 2.0 can be very good value for money, especially if you buy credits at the current half-price deal or purchase sale packs on their website. Because you can audition and search the entire catalogue of millions of sounds, you can limit your purchases to a handful of samples that you need rather than a whole pack that you probably won’t use. This is where Loopcloud 2.0 comes into its own, it’s a cost effective way of purchasing only those samples you need, especially as there are 150 free samples per week. The fully featured app allows you to sync, change key and apply effects whilst auditioning samples before committing to a purchase. You can mix and match across the whole catalogue very easily by the intelligent search features.

Your monthly subscription at Splice buys download credits that you use to buy samples. Each sample costs 1 credit and there are four subscription options – $7.99 per month (100 download credits); $13.99 per month (300 download credits); $21.99 per month (600 download credits) or $29.99 per month (1000 download credits). There are also midi files (10 credits) and presets for Serum, Massive, Sylenth, and Spire (typically 3 credits).

Splice have over 2 million sounds that are added to each week. These include packs from Loopmasters, Black Octopus, Prime Loops, Sample Magic, W.A. Production and many more.

They also offer rent to own on several vsts and a studio feature where you can use the Splice app to upload, share and collaborate on projects in specified DAWs – Ableton Live, Logic, Garage Band, and FL Studio.

They don’t appear to offer a dedicated plugin with features like drag and drop, tempo matching etc.

Noiiz is a subscription service by Samplephonics and offers exclusively Samplephonics content. There are 3 subscription models. Starter is $9.99 per month for 1Gb downloads, 1 instrument per month and 1 preset pack per month; Unlimited is $99 for a yearly subscription and gives you access to everything with unlimited downloads; Lifetime is a one-off payment of $599. There are about 180,000 sounds that are added to regularly. They also offer presets for Serum, Sylenth and Massive. They have a sampler plus a growing number of instruments including handpan, celesta, grand marimba, Leeds Town Hall Organ and toy percussion.

The Noiiz plugin allows you to browse and audition sounds in tempo / key and drag and drop to your DAW. It has a ‘Noiiz DNA’ feature that searches for similar sounds.

Conclusions
The more I use Loopcloud, the more I like it and am starting to find it very useful. It’s easy and intuitive to use and definitely streamlines the creation process. It connects seamlessly with your DAW and makes it very easy to arrange songs, from the intelligent and well featured search functions to the autokey and time-stretching options. Being able to audition sounds before purchase is an invaluable feature and although they tend to have an ambient noise during the preview, this isn’t generally an issue.

Where Loopcloud really comes into its own is the way that it changes how I approach using samples – and it probably will for you too. The problem with packs is that they can be very expensive to buy – ranging from £15 to about £30. Of course you can pick them up much cheaper in sales, discounts etc. But the problem is that you generally only have one type of sound. Loopcloud enables you to mix and match in ways that wouldn’t be possible without owning a huge number of sample packs. It’s so much more than this though. Manually searching through sample packs is not quick or easy. DAWs will handle time-stretching ok but it’s quite laborious having to pitch correct every single sample. This is what makes Loopcloud so impressive, it works perfectly and easily handles these sort of tasks.

The other point is hard-drive space. The samples are downloaded to your hard-drive and for the album I’ve created the samples occupy 381Mb whereas if I had all of the sample packs this would run into a few Gb.

I’ve created the album embedded at the top of the post entirely using samples from Loopcloud. The samples have subsequently been processed with a variety of Eventide effects – Blackhole, 2016 Stereo Room, Octavox, H3000 Band Delays, H949 Dual Harmoniser and Ultrachannel and SpecOps (Unfiltered Audio). The songs were subsequently mastered with Magnetite (Black Rooster Audio), Elevate (Newfangled Audio) and Stage (Fiedler Audio). The album was arranged, recorded and mastered in MuLab 7.

The arrangement for ‘unrequited’ is shown below, this is a fairly simple arrangement but you could of course make your arrangement as simple or complex as you like or use any number of samplers – a few of my favourites are Palindrome, Polygon (Glitchmachines) and Dust (Soundmorph) – or use any number of effects to create a more experimental sound.

unrequited_screenshot

Some of these songs were created using loops from largely from the same pack but on others I’ve mixed up styles and genres, for example using loops from ambient sample packs combined with DnB loops; techno loops combined with underground garage loops etc. This is the beauty of Loopcloud, it offers huge creative potential and increases the usability of sample packs reducing the likelihood of you sounding like someone else who’s used it.

All of the samples were already in my library so cost data is a bit more tricky to calculate. I’ve used a total of 69 loops and I’ve estimated that these would cost 25 credits each. At the basic cost rate, this is £17.25 although with the current offer the cost would be half this at £8.68 and with the 500 credits introductory offer that would reduce the cost to about £4. Subsequent albums may not benefit from the discount but in practice you could use VST synths as well as sample loops, I wanted to create an album using only samples.

For me, subscription services are useful if you regularly use a large number of samples from the same providers. The benefit with Loopcloud is that you are not tied in to a subscription so you can still justify buying sample packs from other providers that aren’t featured in their store and you can limit your spending if you only buy what you need and make use of the extensive free content.

Review of This So Called ‘Spirit’ by Strange Lights — May 13, 2018

Review of This So Called ‘Spirit’ by Strange Lights

This is an excellent album, it has a psych kind of feel at times, excellent grooves backed by atmospheric pads / synths, guitar riffs and excellent vocals. There’s often a contrast between ambient and more urgent elements, I really like the squelchy synth sound effects too.

Shaman Goat Dance
An atmospheric opening with evolving bass and distorted synth develops a solid laid back groove from really well layered elements. The vocals have a floaty feel. Nice change of feel with just bass and the acoustic guitar riff leading into a full groove again.

Spirit Drone
Swirling slightly distorted guitar riff to open, momentum is provided by bass. Vocals are floaty again and contrast with the more urgent sounding guitar. There’s an Eastern feel at times, it’s a hypnotic sound and the song takes on a jam quality when drumming enters. I really like the delayed squelchy synth sound effects too.

Sun Dub (See a Sunrise)
Kick and bass provide a great momentum with an evolving drone, the groove evolves with some excellent background sound effects and lead synth.

Sunken Dub
An urgency to the strings which open the song, it evolves with bass and pad, the strings fade to give a more laid back groove with a pulsing drone and excellent synth sound with an acid quality.

The Black Tortoise of the North
Atmospheric opening with guitar and synth, bass gives a momentum and the heavily processed vocals add a great element. There’s a subtle movement and great ambience and a nice change of feel with the harsher sounding synth leading into delayed sound effects.

Review of Lo Life – LoFi House Loops sample pack by Mode Audio — May 11, 2018

Review of Lo Life – LoFi House Loops sample pack by Mode Audio

Mode Audio has introduced Lo Life – LoFi House Loops, a 414Mb collection of lush, royalty-free House synth loops and drum machine grooves. It is available in Wav, Rex2, Reason and Ableton Live pack formats from Mode Audio (£18 regular price).

This review is for the Wav sample pack which features a total of 380 samples arranged in different folders. These are ‘drum samples’, ‘Lo Life loops’, ‘Lo Life tail samples’ and ‘midi’ folders.

‘drum samples’ contains a total of 83 samples comprising the individual samples from 10 kits. These include 12 kick samples, 13 clap samples, 22 hi hat samples (open and closed) and 36 percussions samples (rims, toms, shakers and bongos). A great range of sounds, all of the these have depth and warmth, there’s a very subtle saturation and a very natural sounding reverb too.

‘Lo Life loops’ contains 23 bass loops, 63 drums and percussion loops, 11 SFX loops, 17 Synth Chords loops and 36 Synths and Instruments loops that are labelled by name, key and tempo.

The bass loops range from 106bpm to 122bpm. There’s a really good variety of sounds from deep and rolling, subby, groovy to acid 303 style. There’s great depth to the sounds and a subtle saturation.

The drums and instruments loops contain a range of superb grooves. These are split into kick and top drums / percussion loops which is excellent because it allows for layering and separate processing. They have a subtle overdrive that gives them an edge, a punchy sound with a great presence.

The SFX loops are noise and vinyl type sounds with rhythmic qualities. These add an excellent element and are ideal for further processing.

The Synth Chords loops have a retro feel, a saturation gives warmth and subtle reverb gives depth. There are some vintage sounding synths, and a subtle movement in these sounds which makes them more interesting.

The Synths and Instruments loops compliment the Synth Chords very well. There are a range of pads, keys, mallets, synths and vocals with the characteristic lo-fi, retro sound from saturation and reverb.

The Lo Fi Tail samples are an addition we’ve seen in other Mode Audio packs. On the face of it they allow you to apply a natural reverb tail to sample loops which is really useful in itself. However, they are also excellent sound sources in their own right that can be manipulated and mangled to add interesting elements to your tracks or could even be used as a starting point for new tracks.

The Midi loops folder is a very welcome addition to the sample pack and contains 104 fully featured midi loops. Typically 4 bar loops, these can be used with your own sounds or edited to create subtle or stark contrast and variations.

Verdict

This is an excellent value sample pack containing an superb variety of loops and drum hits with a retro, lo-fi saturated sound. As with other Mode Audio packs there is potential to mix and match samples to create tracks but you can use also use these loops as a starting point to create something new and original. The sounds layer really well together and give options for a stripped back sound or a fuller sound and everything in between. The tail samples are an excellent addition and the inclusion of midi loops are also very welcomed to give even greater flexibility and potential.

The album embedded at the beginning of the post highlights some of the possibilities and flexibility of this pack. There are lofi house tracks such as track 1 using drum loops and midi files with the new Go2 VST (Rob Papen) processed with Blackhole, H3000 Band Delay, H949 Dual Harmoniser, Ultrachannel (all Eventide);

Tracks 4 & 6 are further examples of a lofi house sound using sample loops processed with Octavox, Blackhole, H3000 Band Delay, Ultrachannel (all Eventide)

There are also the more experimental / ambient tracks 2, 3 & 5 recorded live in Sensomusic Usine Hollyhock 3 using samples with Palindrome (Glitchmachines) processed with Blackhole, H3000 Band Delay, Ultratap, H949 Dual Harmoniser, Ultrachannel (all Eventide) and all processed with Litote (Inear Display).

All tracks mastered in MuLab 7 using Magnetite (Black Rooster Audio), Elevate (Newfangled Audio) and Stage (Fiedler Audio).

Review of Blackhole reverb effect (VST/AU/AAX) by Eventide — May 2, 2018

Review of Blackhole reverb effect (VST/AU/AAX) by Eventide

Introduction
Eventide have updated the popular Blackhole reverb plug-in which is part of its H9 Signature Series. The GUI has been updated and it is now NKS-ready — reconfigured to support Native Instruments’ Native Kontrol Standard extended plug-in format for use with MASCHINE and KOMPLETE KONTROL keyboards and software.

Blackhole is available as an AAX/AU/VST plug-in for Mac OS X 10.7+ and Windows 7+ at a promo price of $69.00 USD until 31 May 2018 (rising thereafter to an MSRP of $199.00 USD) from Eventide dealers and its website. A fully-functional 30-day demo version is available.

Eventide use PACE’s ilok.com licensing system, with or without an iLok hardware dongle, to license their plugin products.

For more in-depth information, please visit the dedicated Blackhole webpage.

Overview
Whereas most reverbs are constrained by the physics of the real world, Blackhole creates virtual spaces that could never exist in reality. It can turn a simple drum track into an otherworldly rhythm section. Capable of creating epic soundscapes, space-warping special effects and drones, Blackhole can cover spaces as small as a room and as large as space itself.

Designed for real-time manipulation, Blackhole features The Ribbon, an innovative control that allows anyone to program two settings for any combination of the controls to transition between them. The programmable HOTSWITCH helps push creativity further still by enabling users to instantly jump to an alternative setting at the push of a button. Other controls include PRE DELAY, modulation depth and rate, equalization, feedback and resonance as well as a proprietary GRAVITY parameter that reverses the arrow of time by inverting the reverb’s decay. This combination of controls is intended to make Blackhole as close as possible to the experience of tweaking real hardware.

In-depth Review
As well as making Blackhole nks ready, the update also brings the GUI up to date with their other H9 Signature Series effects – MangledVerb and Ultratap which I’ve previously reviewed. If you’ve used either of these effects then you’ll instantly feel at home.

Blackhole has a clear, well defined interface. The control knobs are large and allow easy adjustment of the controls to shape your sound as desired. There are 2 additional controls which give you further control over your sound. The ribbon allows you to program 2 settings for any controls and morph to any sound between the two. Hotswitch is programmable to instantly change to an alternate sound. This hardware emulation is an excellent feature Eventide have implemented in their H9 effects that Blackhole also handles seamlessly.

BH_Gui_top

The top part of the display contains the menu where you can load / save presets; compare current settings with the last saved or used preset; enable the ‘mixlock’ which locks the mix settings and uses this value for every preset you load and access the user manual.

BH_Gui_mid

The input and output levels are shown on the left and right of the display respectively. Each has a VU meter above and there’s a sticky overload indicator that remains lit when there’s an overload suggesting you need to adjust levels.

The controls are pretty self explanatory;

Mix is the dry/wet setting. This control has a non-linear taper which puts most of the knob travel in the most usable range.

Gravity is Blackhole’s take on decay time. On the right-hand side, the Gravity control sweeps through its forward reverb range from a very dense decay to a very long and smooth decay. On the left hand side, the Gravity control is in its inverse mode and sweeps through a range of reverse reverb-like settings.

Size determines the size of the reverb. This ranges from subtle to massive – on an interstellar scale.

Pre-delay is the amount of delay before the reverb section. With tempo sync off it ranges from 0 – 2000ms, with tempo sync activated it is set in beat divisions of the tempo.

Low / High controls the level of low and high frequencies in the reverb tail using shelving filters with a corner frequency of 350 Hz (low) and 2000Hz (high).

Resonance controls the resonance of the low and filters.

Depth / Rate – controls the modulation depth in the reverb tail that can reduce ringing and add some motion to the sound. The rate control sets the relative speed of modulation.

Feedback Controls the feedback around the entire reverberation structure, for even larger sounds. Turning clockwise to Infinite will allow for infinite reverberation time while still letting incoming signal into the reverberation structure. Turning further clockwise to Freeze sets the reverberation time to infinite and does not allow incoming signal into the reverberation structure. (Mod Depth or Mod Rate must be turned down to 0 in order for infinite reverberation time to be achieved).

Tempo sync has 3 settings. When off, the pre-delay is set in ms. When in sync mode, the amount will sync to your host DAW tempo or you can set it manually as required.

BH_Gui_ribbon

The bottom part of the display contains the performance controls.

The Ribbon is an innovative feature designed to emulate hardware. You can program left and right ranges and morph between them with the ribbon which looks like an electric arc.

It’s as simple as clicking on the white dot at the tip of any knob control and dragging it to the desired setting for the left hand side of the ribbon. This will program the knob and draw a blue arc from the initial knob position to the new, programmed knob position. To adjust the knob position for the right side of the Ribbon, click on the blue dot at the opposite side of the arc and adjust it to the desired position for the right side of the Ribbon. You can adjust the Ribbon programming by grabbing the dots at either end of the arc and adjusting them to the desired position. To delete programming, right click on either of the dots.

Alternatively, press the button on the left or right side of the Ribbon, and then move any knob to its desired Ribbon position for that side. The Ribbon programming can be cleared for all knobs by right clicking the button on either side of the Ribbon.

Additionally, the Ribbon is programmed to follow MIDI Continuous Control (CC) #1 messages so you can for example use the Modulation Wheel on a MIDI device to control the ribbon.

Kill this kills the input to the reverb section allowing you to hear the reverb tail fade out. This can be useful to help dial in the sound, or it can be automated for a more tremolo-like effect. Kill can be toggled via MIDI Continuous Control (CC) #2 messages. It will toggle when the CC goes
from low (value = 64).

Hotswitch allows you to adjust settings so that you can switch between effects. It’s easy to set up, long-press to enter programming mode and the button starts blinking. Make the required changes and then long-press to exit programming mode. When you press the hotswitch button you toggle between the two settings.

Freeze sets the reverb time to infinite, sets Mod Depth to Freeze (equivalent to Mod Depth at “0”) and mutes the input effectively freezing the audio in the reverb buffer. Making changes to some controls when Freeze is active can allow for interesting sound design. Freeze can be controlled via MIDI Continuous Control (CC) #4 messages. It will toggle when the CC goes from low (value = 64).

Conclusions
Blackhole is simply stunning. It is an awesome reverb that can create dense ambient drones, huge reverbs for impacts or more subtle ambiences for strings. It is the first effect I use, in fact I’ve used it on my last 10 releases, pretty much every single track. If you’re tempted it’s definitely worth purchasing at the heavily discounted introductory promo price.

As well as sounding stunning, it is also easy to use and get to grips with. It comes complete with more than 50 presets, including some by Eventide artists: Richard Devine, Vernon Reid, Flood & Alan Moulder, Jonsi & Alex (Sigur Rós), and John Agnello. They highlight the huge potential of the effect.

I could have chosen any of my recent releases but I’ve recorded ‘tangential memories’ embedded above to highlight some of the sounds that Blackhole can produce.

Tracks 1 & 4 – chord progression created in Scaler (Pluginboutique); Blue 2 (Rob Papen) processed with Blackhole; Blue 2 processed with Incipit (Inear Display) and Blackhole; Olafur Arnalds Chamber Evolution (Spitfire Audio) processed with Blackhole; Glitchmachines samples processed with Cryogen (Glitchmachines), H949 Dual Harmoniser (Eventide) and Blackhole.

Track 2 – chord progression created in Scaler (Pluginboutique); Blue 2 (Rob Papen) processed with Blackhole; Blue 2 processed with Incipit (Inear Display) and Blackhole; Olafur Arnalds Chamber Evolution (Spitfire Audio) processed with Blackhole; Sample from Urban and Suburban (BOOM Library) processed with Blackhole.

Track 3 – created using RapidComposer; 3 instances of Synthmaster One (one instance processed with Blackhole); Olafur Arnalds Chamber Evolution (Spitfire Audio) processed with Blackhole; Palindrome (Glitchmachines) processed with Outer Space (AudioThing) and Blackhole.

All tracks mixed / mastered in MuLab using Ultrachannel (Eventide), Magnetite (Black Rooster Audio), Elevate (Newfangled Audio) and Stage (Fiedler Audio).